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Mesa County safety plan, crash dashboard highlight spike in Grand Junction traffic deaths
Summary
Regional Transportation Planning Office staff presented the Mesa County Safety Action Plan and an interactive crash dashboard showing a disproportionate share of crashes and a sharp rise in fatalities concentrated in the Grand Junction area; staff flagged outreach, school education and a high‑risk rural network for 2026.
Rachel Peterson, the regional transportation planner with the Regional Transportation Planning Office, presented the Mesa County Safety Action Plan annual report and an interactive crash-data dashboard to the UTC, saying the county has formed a Transportation Safety Task Force to implement the plan.
"Once our Mesa County Safety Action Plan was adopted in November 2024, we established in January 2025 the Transportation Safety Task Force," Peterson said, introducing the office's multidisciplinary approach. She said the dashboard shows about 68% of total crashes occur in the Grand Junction urban area and that Mesa County ranks fourth-highest in fatality rate among Colorado counties with populations above 100,000. "2025 was one of the worst years that Grand Junction PD had seen for especially deaths on our roadways," Peterson said.
The nut graf: the RTPO framed the dashboard and task force as tools to identify hot spots and to target prevention. Peterson demonstrated filters for mode, year and location and walked members through a time-series 'wind' tab and intersection drill-downs; she pointed to Patterson (29) as a recurring high‑frequency crash location and described monthly law-enforcement "surge operations" for high-impairment days.
Tara Clarity, who identified herself as the RTPO safety program manager, laid out outreach and education efforts planned for 2026, including school-based outreach and a safety-education review to inventory who currently provides bike/ped education and where gaps exist. "It is not a requirement to graduate high school, and it's not available in high schools," Clarity said about driver-education access in local schools, noting private courses and graduated licensing are the current paths to early licensure.
Peterson also described community events tied to education and awareness: the Cycle Safety Fest (a combined motorcycle and bicycle education event) is scheduled for April 18 at the Mesa County Fairgrounds from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., and Bike Month will run in May with station-hosting, pledges to ride, family events and group rides. The RTPO said the county will host a statewide traffic-safety summit in July at the Convention Center.
RTPO staff urged committee members and the public to use the crash-data dashboard to examine specific intersections or corridors and to inform community outreach and funding applications. They said the dashboard is updated after law-enforcement agencies submit data to the state, leading to a lag in availability of the most recent year’s records.
The presentation closed with staff encouraging local engagement in education and safety programs and with an invitation to review the RTPO's Move Safe Mesa County initiative and the crash-data dashboard for more detailed local analysis.
What’s next: staff will continue outreach, complete the 2026 education-gap analysis and pursue grant-funded projects (high-risk rural network assessments and speed‑feedback signage) during the year.
